From Beyond The Rainbow Somewhere

Post navigation

5 Foods That Can Cause Depression

The food you eat directly affects your brain

Food is the best medicine. All your cells, bones, signaling molecules, and tissues are built from what you eat. For example, dietary fats are the building blocks of brain tissue and help balance hormones, and muscles are built from protein. Different vitamins and minerals are used to create energy and send electrical impulses along neurons so that we can move, think, and feel. A nourishing diet is the best strategy against depression.

Many studies have shown that people who eat an anti-inflammatory diet have significantly lower risks of depression (2-5). A recent study that tracked about 6,500 women over 12 years showed that women eating an anti-inflammatory diet had a 20% lower risk of developing depression than their peers (6). These anti-inflammatory diets consist of healthy fats, vitamins and antioxidants, and plenty of high-quality protein. On the other hand, many foods in the Standard American Diet (SAD) create chronic inflammation. These five inflammatory foods are the most frequent offenders I see when treating patients for depression:

If you’re suffering from symptoms of depression or anxiety, it’s worth eliminating dairy for 30 days and seeing how you feel. Some people are able to re-introduce dairy after a month off with no problems, while others totally lose their taste for it and even vomit when trying it again!

In addition to Roundup, the primary herbicide sprayed on GMOs like soy, GMOs also carry a variety of other toxicants that may be even more harmful in combination than alone. As even non-GMO foods can be contaminated with pesticides, I advise my clients, especially those suffering from depression, to eat organic.

Sugar and Artificial Sugar

Americans love sugar. The average American eats a staggering 164 pounds of sugar per year (12,13). Think about that for a moment. Even worse, sugar is highly addictive – the more we eat, the more we want.

Our bodies were not designed to handle the blood sugar and insulin roller coaster that many of us are on. Here’s how it goes: when you eat sugar, whether it’s in an obvious form like soda or a non-obvious form like pasta, your blood sugar increases quickly. This fast increase then spikes insulin. When insulin removes blood sugar, you then have a blood sugar crash, and cortisol comes in to compensate and try to move sugar out of storage and back into the bloodstream. This process, often called reactive hypoglycemia, is responsible for carb and sugar cravings (since your brain needs steady sugar to function), which leads to anxiety, headaches, irritability, and ultimately depression.

Because of all the research showing how harmful sugar is (15-18), food manufacturers have gotten creative with its naming. Don’t be fooled by code names like cane sugar, crystalline fructose, maltodextrin, high-fructose corn syrup – it’s all sugar.

It’s tempting to swap out sugar for artificial sweeteners. Artificial sugars, like aspartame and sucralose, are ‘zero calorie’ because they cannot be digested by the human body. But these chemicals don’t just pass through your body with no effect. Artificial sugars confuse hormones and change your microbiome. A high-profile scientific article showed that artificial sugar consumption leads to metabolic syndromes like insulin resistance and diabetes (19). Choose sweeteners that your body recognizes, like honey.

Vegetable Oils

The Standard American Diet contains large amounts of unhealthy fats, mostly in the form of commercial vegetable oils. Many processed foods, ranging from store-bought cookies to salad dressing, contain these oils. Vegetable oils include safflower oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, soybean oil, and canola oil. These oils are considered ‘processed’ because many high-heat and high-pressure steps, as well as chemical solvents, are required to create them. Further, many of these oils are made from GMOs.

For example, have you ever seen a canola plant? Canola oil, which has been touted as “heart healthy,” is derived from the Canadian rapeseed plant. Recognizing that “rape oil” was not a good marketing tactic, this invention was given a new name as a combination of “Canada” and “ola,” which means oil. Today, it is genetically modified by Monsanto to withstand saturation with Roundup herbicide (20, 21).

So what do I eat?!

I recommend that people give themselves 2-4 weeks to kick the sugar, gluten, and dairy habit. In this time, you can try non-GMO foods and healthier fats like olive oil and lard. People are amazed by how good they feel and how quickly their tastes change.